COMMISSIONER LARRICK did not give up, however. Periodically the Food and Drug
Administration put out alarming new estimates, such as 819,060 pounds of barbiturates,
worth $40 million, produced in 1959; more deaths from barbiturates than from any other
poison, and a 670 per cent increase in such deaths in Los Angeles; 8 billion amphetamine
tablets a year with at least 50 per cent going into the illicit market . . . etc.
(Statements about production in this period were easy to puff because the two largest U.S.
manufacturers of barbiturates and amphetamines refused to release any figures; and there
is no doubt that a substantial flow of both these drugs was finding its way into
uncontrolled channels via such perfectly legal devices as export to Canada or Mexico,
purchase in those countries, and reimportation into the United States.)

Accidents-an airplane crash in which it was learned that the pilot had been taking
tranquilizers, two trailer trucks in a multiple-vehicle melee on the New Jersey Turnpike
where fourteen benzedrine tablets were found in one of the truck cabs were widely
publicized, and an "expert" estimate was launched by planting in the United
Nations Bulletin on Narcotics a story to the effect that more than 5 million Americans
were abusing barbiturates and other sedatives, stimulants, and tranquilizers. In 1960,
domestic barbiturate production was officially reported as 852,000 pounds, which was
translated into an estimate of 6 billion one-grain capsules, or thirty-three for every
man, woman, and child in the country. In 1961 the story was that Americans had ingested
1.4 million pounds of tranquilizers, and it was claimed that tranquilizers were beginning
to rival the barbiturates as suicide drugs.

The FDA early found an ally in Senator Thomas Dodd, whose juvenile Delinquency
Subcommittee commenced, in 1958, exploring all forces tending to undermine American youth
- pornography, the unregulated sales of guns and other weapons, child abuse, and of course
drugs. Dodd soon emerged as an outspoken expert, hammering at the idea that so-called
dangerous drugs, unlike opiates and marijuana, were not confined to slum use but were
affecting young people in high schools, on college campuses, and in wealthy suburban
neighborhoods. He linked barbiturates and amphetamines as `hidden accomplices" with
crimes of violence, accidents, and suicides, asserting that they contributed to bizarre
sexual behavior among young people. He collected his own horrible cases: two teenagers
burned to death in a brush fire that overtook their automobile after they had passed out
from an overdose of barbiturates taken as part of a suicide pact; an eighteen-year-old boy
who killed a friend at a "goof ball" party while they were joking with one
another; three teenage lads who robbed and killed an elderly gentleman in Chicago while
they were under the influence of barbiturates -allegedly because he was deaf and did not
understand immediately that he was being held up. Apparently in the same case, or at least
in the case of a similar old gentleman, a sixteen year-old fired eleven shots into the
body, and when asked why was reported to have answered, "The pills made us do
it." A seventeen-year-old, his personality totally changed, according to the Dodd
Subcommittee, by the use of Seconal, savagely slashed a cab driver to death in Los
Angeles. And a young girl, allegedly under the influence of drugs, ran over her mother and
dragged the body more than a mile under the car.

In 1961, Senator Dodd sponsored a series of bills to bring barbiturates and
amphetamines under strict federal control, and in 1962 his Subcommittee held hearings in
California and New York-which incidentally gave Governor Brown and Attorney General Mosk
(and Senator Keating, who was on the Subcommittee) an additional platform from which to
urge the White House Conference.

But now momentarily the action shifts to another quarter: Senator Kefauver's Antitrust
and Monopoly Subcommittee, battling the drug industry over prices and marketing practices,
found not only that it was being out-maneuvered and out-muscled by drug-lobbying forces on
Capitol Hill, but also that the FDA itself-and Commissioner Larrick-appeared to be aligned
with the very interests they were supposed to be policing. In 1960-61 Larrick had named a
Drug Subcommittee of his FDA Citizens Advisory Committee to counsel with him on drug
matters, and had loaded it with drug-industry apologists. In the summer of 1962 this
Committee issued a report, in its quasiofficial status as a policy advisor, urging even
more leniency toward the drug industry, to allow the drug interests, in effect, to police
and regulate themselves.

So Kefauver turned his guns on the FDA and quickly found a vulnerable target. Dr. Henry
Welsh, director of the agency's Division of Antibiotics, was discovered to have been paid
nearly $300,000 as "honoraria" for various articles and reports, all from drug
companies who were directly affected by decisions which Dr. Welsh controlled in his
official capacity. When this broke, in 1962, FDA was badly hurt. Simultaneously, Senator
Humphrey's Subcommittee on Reorganization and International Organizations attacked FDA's
drug-testing practices, Larrick clumsily offended the Senator, and in the summer of 1962
Secretary Celebrezze began murmuring about pressures on him to accept Larricks
retirement. Then right in the midst of these difficulties the story of Dr. Frances Kelsey
and thalidomide broke.

One result of the thalidomide scandal was, probably, to save Larricks neck, for
public shock at revelations about deformed babies threatened not only the Food and Drug
Administration but the image of the New Frontier itself, so the White House stepped in and
helped turn Dr. Kelsey into a national heroine to divert attention from the inexcusable
derelictions of her division. Another result was passage of the Kefauver-Harris drug
amendments of 1962, which substantially strengthened the hand of FDA in controlling drugs
in terms of their safety and efficacy. And these interacting forces, plus the tragic death
of movie idol Marilyn Monroe from an overdose of barbiturates, gave strong new impetus to
FDA's drive to repress abuse of the so-called dangerous drugs. Larrick might come out
looking like a public savior after all.

If I seem to be stressing too much the emphasis continually placed on the theme that
misuse of amphetamines was causing large numbers of accidents on the highways, and
particularly among truckers, bear with me; I am doing so because that theme has a final
note which is remarkably revealing. In his message to Congress on consumer protection in
1962 President Kennedy said:

One problem meriting special attention deals with the growing abuse of non-narcotic
drugs, including barbiturates and amphetamines. Society's gains will be illusory if we
reduce the incidence of one kind of drug dependence, only to have new kinds of drugs
substituted. The use of these drugs is increasing problems of abnormal and social
behavior, highway accidents, juvenile delinquency, and broken homes. [Italics added.]

This set the tone of the White House Conference (and if the wording seems vaguely
familiar, look back to page 235 where I quoted the President's opening statement to that
gathering). The conference, as we have already seen, gave much play to dangerous drugs,
and resulted in the report by the President's Advisory Commission (November 1963) calling
for new repressive legislation.

Meanwhile, Larrick kept publicizing the heroic efforts of his inspectors against
allegedly organized gangs of criminals who specialized in distributing amphetamine tablets
to truckers through sinister networks of roadside stops along the nation's highways. The
entertainment media commenced featuring episodes portraying a lunch-wagon wagon cook
rolling pills across a counter to some burly driver, whereupon the scene fades to a
spectacular highway accident, the smoking wreckage of at least one monster truck,
ambulances, flares, crowds, police, and trumpet flourishes.

By 1964, the gangbuster aspects of controlling these new categories had received so
much emphasis that Senator Dodd revised and reintroduced his bill with new provisions
authorizing FDA inspectors to carry guns, make arrests, and seize contraband drugs
forthwith. The measure, ambitiously titled Psychotoxic Drug Control Act of 1964, recited
as congressional findings "that illicit traffic was resulting in extensive sales of
drugs to juveniles, who were thereupon led into delinquency and crime," and "to
experiment with narcotic drugs, which experimentation may result in narcotic
addiction," and further that the use of such drugs "often endangers safety on
the highway." The Dodd bill was a hybrid, in that it imposed a pattern of controls
similar to that of the Harrison Act, but did so under the federal interstate commerce
powers and left administration and enforcement to the Food and-Drug Administration. The
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare was authorized to add new drug categories on a
finding that they had potential for abuse.

President Johnson, however, displayed little enthusiasm for thus creating a new federal
enforcement domain in the province of "dangerous drugs" (where the crime-busting
responsibilities of Attorney General Kennedy might be extended and enlarged). So he
executed a maneuver often resorted to when the chief executive wants to take a play away
from Congress and dampen a legislative proposal: in July 1964, with appropriate fanfare,
he called upon all existing agencies in the executive branch to work harder at remedying
the situation:

Narcotic and other drug abuse is inflicting upon parts of the country enormous damage
in human suffering, crime, and economic loss through thievery. The Federal Government,
being responsible for the regulation of foreign and interstate commerce, bears a major
responsibility in respect to the illegal traffic in drugs and the consequences of that
traffic. That responsibility is shared by several departments of the Government and by a
number of divisions, bureaus, etc., within them. I now direct those units to examine into
their present procedures, to bring those procedures into maximum activity, and wherever
necessary to put into effect additional programs of action aimed at major corrections in
the conditions caused by drug abuse. I desire the full power of the Federal Government to
be brought to bear upon three objectives: (1) The destruction of the illegal traffic in
drugs, (2) the prevention of drug abuse, and (3) the cure and rehabilitation of victims of
this traffic.

When such a move is made from the White House, spokesmen for the administration
thereupon go to Capitol Hill and urge Congress to hold off with legislation on the ground
that the matter is being studied and that better coordination of executive efforts may
make additional legislation unnecessary. Accordingly, although every concerned agency in
the executive branch had already expressed approval of the Dodd bill, official support
from that quarter now slackened. The Senate passed the bill anyway, whereupon it was
stopped in the House by a lobbying campaign on behalf of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
Association and the American Medical Association, which was such a show of strength that
the measure-now also lacking administration support-would probably have been abandoned
altogether without an unexpected miracle.

But the miracle was forthcoming (surrounded by a slight mystery, enduring to this day,
as to whether Larrick or someone else in Washington originally promoted it). A CBS newsman
named McMullen set up a mail-drop office in New York, printed some letterheads identifying
himself as 'McMullen Services,' and succeeded in buying, from a dozen drug manufacturers,
over a million barbiturate and amphetamine tablets, valued in retail drug prices at
$50,000 and of an estimated worth on the black market of as much as $500,000-at a cost to
McMullen Services of $628. When CBS broke this, against the background of juvenile victims
and highway crashes, public excitement seethed and members of Congress crowded forward
once again to call for tighter controls and a tough new federal law.

However, when the 89th Congress convened in January 1965, there had been another
change, as has been remarked: former Attorney General Kennedy was now sitting in the upper
house as Senator Kennedy, and this accounted for a shift in strategy by all concerned. One
of President Johnson's first messages (January 7, 1965) exhorted the lawmakers to rush
through "legislation to bring the production and distribution of barbiturates,
amphetamines, and other psychotoxic drugs under more effective control" and at the
same time to give federal law-enforcement agencies "authority to seize counterfeit
drugs at their source." A bill for this purpose including the counterfeit provisions
had already been introduced, as H.R. 2, on January 4, the first day of the session, by
Chairman Oren Harris of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. Senator Dodd
put in his bill again on the Senate side, with eight co-sponsors, including Senator
Kennedy, but from the outset the action centered around H.R. 2 and was dominated and
controlled by the House proceedings.

H.R. 2 was entitled Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965, and differed from the prior
Dodd versions in a number of significant respects. It covered all "depressant and
stimulant' drugs plus any other substance that the HEW Secretary found to have . a
potential for abuse" on account of its depressant, stimulant, or hallucinogenic
effects, thus giving the Secretary broadened authority. It commenced with a sweeping
declaration of policy, including, of course, a reference to our old friends, the truck
drivers:

Congress hereby finds and declares that there is a widespread illicit traffic in
depressant and stimulant drugs moving in or otherwise affecting interstate commerce; that
the use of such drugs when not under the supervision of a licensed practitioner, often
endangers safety on the highways (without distinction of interstate and intrastate traffic
thereon) and otherwise has become a threat to the public health and safety.

Although departing from the Harrison Act pattern by relying on Congress' powers over
interstate commerce instead of the constitutional power to tax, H.R. 2 imposed a
registration, inspection, and record-keeping pattern, covering everyone concerned with the
controlled traffic, which closely paralleled the Harrison requirements. Penalties were
lighter than for opium, cocaine, and marijuana offenses, and no mandatory minimums were
provided, but mere possession without a license or prescription was made a federal crime,
and medical practitioners were exempted in the same tricky phrasing that had given so much
trouble in all the prior decades, i.e., "while acting in the course of their
professional practice."

An effort was made to soften the impact of possession offenses somewhat by placing a
special burden on the government to prove that the possession in question was not merely
for personal use of the possessor or some other member of his household. The penalty for
possession was a maximum of $1,000 or one year's imprisonment, unless the offense was
committed "with intent to defraud or mislead" or unless the offender had been
convicted previously, in which event the maximums jumped to $10,000 and three years.

The powers of FDA inspectors were increased substantially more under H.R. 2 than in the
Dodd version. Besides being authorized to carry firearms, serve warrants, seize contraband
drugs and everything related to their production forthwith, and in certain circumstances
to arrest without warrants, they were to be brought under the special protections extended
by the Federal Criminal Code to U.S. marshals, FBI agents, and other federal officers
primarily engaged in criminal-law enforcement activities.

But the most important innovation was the quite new-and more than slightly
irrelevant-section inserted into H.R. 2 to deal with counterfeit drugs. One reason this
section turned up in the bill is obvious: the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association,
backed by the AMA, had shown enough power in the House of Representatives the year before
to kill Senator Dodd's bill with ease, and it was plain that legislation like H.R. 2 would
have little chance of passing if it were not somehow given the blessing of these powerful
drug and medical lobbies. The counterfeit provision (first publicly referred to in
President Johnson's message of January 7, 1965) was the price of this blessing. But it was
also slightly more, which leads us into a diversionary story going all the way back to
1962 and the ill-fated Bay of Pigs expedition.

First, let there be no doubt about how much this provision really gave the drug
industry. Marketing proprietary drugs and compounds which sometimes cost only pennies to
produce and yet are priced in dollars, the drug houses were (and are) uniquely vulnerable
to competitors who produce perfectly pure and wholesome equivalents but usurp their brand
names or otherwise break into their monopolies. The drug lobby had fought with desperate
energy-and total success-to avoid any semblance of a requirement that manufacturers
disclose production costs or pricing practices in connection with the Kefauver-Harris
Amendments, but they were still concerned about the competitive challenge of
counterfeiters, especially because ordinary trade-infringement litigation would require
exposure of their mark-up practices. Obviously if they could make drug counterfeiting a
criminal offense and turn policing over to the FDA or the Department of justice, they
would have a more satisfying solution to this problem than anything that had ever been
accorded to anyone else in the whole history of private enterprise in America.

And that, as it turned out, is what they got. Even luck was on their side: it is
unlikely that if the two arch-enemies of the drug monopolists had remained in their Senate
seats the counterfeit provision of H.R. 2 would have escaped bitter attack, and it is
quite possible that the provision might have been lost; but Senator Humphrey had been
moved out of the action by his election as Vice President, and Senator Kefauver had died
suddenly in the summer of 1963.

Even then it is not likely that other critics of the drug industry could have been so
meekly silenced if the concession had been no more than a sop for passage of the bill. But
the pharmaceutical houses had another claim for this great favor from their government as
well, and that is where the Bay of Pigs comes into the narrative.

Early in the spring of 1961, 1,200 members of the U.S.-backed assault force that came
to such grief in the attempted landing in Cuba were made prisoners by Fidel Castro. The
then brand new Kennedy administration was of course painfully embarrassed. And when Castro
opened negotiations for their release on payment of a suitable ransom, the administration
and Congress were caught together in a position which was politically vulnerable from both
sides: they could not heartlessly leave the victims of the action rotting in Cuban prisons
if there was any way to secure their release, yet they could not appear to be soft with
Castro, or to waste taxpayers' money in paying any such humiliating tribute to him. But
after delicate and protracted negotiations the problem was solved by a remarkable
compromise in which Castro agreed to accept as ransom some $50 million worth of drugs and
medical supplies, which were to be donated gratis by U.S. drug manufacturers.

It has been speculated that because part of the deal was allowing the manufacturers to
take credit for the donations as tax-deductible gifts (at wholesale prices, without
disclosure of their costs), they may well have made awesome profits out of their
patriotism and philanthropy. But be that as it may, by thus getting everyone off the spot
they put themselves in a position to ask for a whopping return favor from leaders in both
branches of government whose faces they had so neatly saved.

Their price was the counterfeit drug ban.

When H.R. 2 was introduced it contained the following recital:

The Congress finds and declares that there is a substantial traffic in counterfeit
drugs simulating the brand or other identifying mark or device of the manufacturer of the
genuine article; that such traffic poses a serious hazard to the health of innocent
consumers of such drugs because of the lack of proper qualifications, facilities, and
manufacturing controls on the part of the counterfeiter, whose operations are clandestine;
that . . . the controls for the suppression of the traffic in such drugs are inadequate .
. . and that these factors require enactment of additional controls with respect to such
drugs without regard to their interstate or intrastate origins.

And the controls it imposed were controls indeed! Nowhere else had criminal sanctions
ever been attached directly to mere trade infringements. If, for example, some ambitious
manufacturer of film should start putting out his product in a familiar-looking yellow box
with a famous word like K-d-k on it, the Eastman Company would have to hire lawyers,
commence a civil proceeding, and be content-at most-with an injunction plus whatever
damages could be shown to have been caused directly by the infringement of its rights (at
the end of which proceedings the infringer might risk wrist-tap punishment if he defied
the injunction).

But if the same eager manufacturer decided instead to Put out some perfectly pure and
efficacious aspirin with a word like B-y-r impressed on the tablets, by the terms of H.R.
2 as it became law he has committed a federal crime for which he can be fined (if he
intended to defraud or mislead) $10,000 and imprisoned three years; the gun-toting drug
inspectors will go out and seize all his product wherever they can find it; and even the
plant and the equipment he has used for the manufacture of the aspirin may be condemned
and forfeited to the United States. Small wonder, then, that the drug lobbyists turned up
this time working right along with the proponents of H.R. 2-though even so, an
unsuccessful attempt was made to tie the Secretary's hands by an amendment which would
have required him to rely on an industry advisory committee, endowed with real powers and
following elaborate procedures to facilitate foot-dragging, in the classification of new
drugs before they could be added to the dangerous category.

H.R. 2 was rushed to hearings in record time. Supporting testimony reached crescendos
of alarm about the new dangers to American youth and the sinister nature of the newly
discovered illicit traffic. But I forgo further repetitions of these themes, since they
sound strikingly like identical outcries heard at intervals ever since 1918, and also
since this is the long awaited point where the death-on-the-highway catechism had,
momentarily at least, its tragicomic comeuppance.

When the hearings were well along, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association
asked to testify, and after carefully disclaiming that his industry had any intention of
questioning the bill as such, he explained somewhat diffidently: "We have a problem .
. . the use of amphetamines by truck drivers. In our experience we have found it to be a
health problem far more than a safety problem." Then he gave the Committee same
interesting `hard data:

The Chairman. You say you do have a problem. From your reports of
industry, are you in a position to indicate whether the reports that we get that the truck
drivers use, to a very large extent, these stimulant drugs is correct?

Mr. Fort. We have made very serious attempts to find out, Mr.
Chairman. Specifically, we wrote in a formal inquiry to the Interstate Commerce Commission
last year in preparation for our Senate testimony on a similar bill then, and asked the
ICC whether they could specify how many amphetamine-connected truck accidents had occurred
in the past 10 years.

The Commission Chairman replied that they had seven years' records and that of the 7
years' records, with approximately 25,000 truck accident reports being filed every year,
they felt that they had 13 provable accidents involving amphetamines, and 40 in which
amphetamines were indicated to be involved.

So it was, in effect, 13 out of 25,000 a year over a 7-year period. They had 13 in
which they felt there were provable connections between amphetamines and the accident.
This is the only statistic we have been able to arrive at.

Moreover, when pressed on the point, this witness put into the record summaries of the
reports on each of the thirteen alleged drug cases (actually fourteen), and it turned out
that in nine the record only showed some kind of pill to have been found in the possession
of a driver involved in an accident. So the net number in which actual drug intoxication
was so much as observed faded away to five in that seven-year period (and among official
reports of 175,000 accidents).

This glimpse of reality had little effect, however. Chairman Harris and his Committee
challenged the witness before he left the stand:

The Chairman. You may file your statement, Mr. Fort, with the
Committee. The Committee will be glad to consider it. However, from your brief
presentation today, I understand that you are generally in accord with the proposed bill
that is before you?

Mr. Fort. That is correct sir. . . .

Mr. Younger. That is a statement that is hard to understand, Mr. Fort,
because if it is a health problem and involves the health of the driver, certainly it
would have something to do with the accidents. If he is a sick man, he probably cannot
react as sharply as a well man.

Mr. Fort. The use of amphetamines as I understand them, sir, doesn't
make a person sick in the accepted sense of the word, in that it dulls his reactions or
facilities. In fact, their intended use, as I understand them medically, is just the
opposite. They are designed to sharpen a person's reaction for a period.

Mr. Younger. Then why do you say it is a health problem?

Mr. Fort. Continued use of them is very bad for the health, I am told.

Mr. Pickle. My comment, more than a question, is that it is surprising
to me that, if this is a health problem, that you would say that the statistics are
exaggerated or that your industry as such has not done something concretely to find out
the source of these pills.

On the same day that this testimony was given, the Interstate Commerce Commission
performed an agile kowtow by getting out an open letter to the Harris Committee (holding
the H.R. 2 hearings, but which happened also to have primary Congressional jurisdiction
over the ICC):

Dear Chairman Harris:

In response to your request . . . I am authorized to submit the following comments with
respect to H.R. 2 on behalf of the Commission's Committee on Legislation. . . .

In the discharge of [its] duty the Commission has investigated many serious accidents
involving motor carriers and also has inspected numerous motor carriers while en route.
These investigations and inspections reveal that on numerous occasions amphetamine drugs
have been found in the possession of truck drivers. I know you are aware how difficult it
is to establish conclusive proof that drugs have been used by commercial drivers involved
in accidents. Rarely is it possible for the Commission to be at the scene of an accident
or to initiate an investigation until sometime after an accident has occurred. We
necessarily depend heavily on the investigation made at the scene by State and local
officers, many of whom may not be aware of the significance of the problem. Despite these
limitations, our experience convinces us that the use of such drugs by drivers of motor
carriers is extensive and is frequently the cause of accidents which result in serious
injury or death.

The Commission is convinced that the use of stimulant and depressant drugs by drivers
of motor carriers is increasing, and that misuse of these drugs creates a grave threat to
highway safety. We believe that there is an urgent need for more effective control over
the manufacture and distribution of such drugs.

And the stream of testimony by members anxious to have their full share of headline
credit continued:

Almost daily, Mr. Chairman, and in almost any newspaper we can read about the
devastating effects of the easy availability of barbiturates, amphetamines, and other
dangerous drugs---crimes of violence and depravity, widespread delinquency among the
young, increased traffic accidents, the graduation into addiction to the hard narcotics,
the ruined lives of countless individuals, the misery and heartbreak and dislocation of
innocent and helpless families. The evidence is overwhelming. Local law enforcement
agencies in my own State and in other highly populated areas of the country report an
alarming spread in the abuse of the stimulant and depressant drugs, especially among
teenagers and in middle and upper-middle-class neighborhoods where drug addiction
previously had not been a major problem. . . .

I can testify from firsthand knowledge of the alarming extent of the use of these
dangerous drugs by young people in my own area of northern New Jersey. There have been a
number of tragic cases which substantiate the findings of Senator Dodd's subcommittee that
the use of these drugs is more and more prevalent among the so-called white-collar youths
who have never had prior delinquency or criminal records. The traffic in these drugs is
heavier than ever, and vigorous action must be taken to prevent the further toll in ruined
lives and serious crime. . . .

I greatly appreciate your giving me this opportunity because I am interested in this
type of legislation, and I consider it of vital importance-vital in the literal sense that
our lives are in danger from the continued widespread illicit traffic in barbiturates,
amphetamines, and the related central nervous system depressant or stimulant drugs. We
know that many of the head-on crashes on our super-highways, where a car or truck will
suddenly careen across median strip and plow into a car going in the other direction, out
entire families, can be attributed to more than just fatigue on the part of one of the
drivers. As the work of the Food and Drug Administration has demonstrated, illicit sales
of the so called pep pills at highway stops are so common that the use of such drugs
constitutes a real and present danger to everyone who ventures out on a highway. . . .

Irrepressible Chairman Harris had the last word: "We had testimony last week from
both the Commission and a representative of the American Trucking Association that such
occurrences were rather rampant all over the country."

The House Committee rushed out a favorable report on H.R. 2, the House passed it in
record time (402 to 0) with little debate, and the Senate followed precipitously. No
further hearings were held in the upper chamber, the reporting committee offering
generalities about drug abuse and juvenile delinquency, drug abuse and the rising crime
rate, and of course drug abuse which "has contributed to the rising accidents on the
highways." The Senate enacted in June 1965 without dissent, in a final flurry of
oratory:

Today, the dangerous drugs are popular among people in all walks of life, ranging from
truck drivers to students to suburban housewives. But they have made their greatest impact
in the ranks of our teenage population. These white-collar youths have taken to these
drugs by the tens of thousands. And the number increases every year . . .

The dope fiend was a myth in the past, but it is becoming a real threat today in the
person of the habitual user of dangerous drugs.The addicted sex fiend was a myth as
related to the sexually passive user of opiates, but this type of deviate is becoming a
reality among the young people hooked on the amphetamine and barbiturate drugs. . . .Thus,
we are faced today with a crop of crippled people in the most vital productive segment of
our population and they are helping to mutilate and undermine our society and our most
basic standards of behavior.

Signing the bill, on July 15, 1965, President Johnson said: "We know all too well
that racketeers in this field are malting easy victims of many of our finest young people.
The Congress hopes, and I hope, that this Act will put a stop to such vicious
business."

There were those who thought when this law first took effect that it might be a step in
the right direction at least to the extent that nominally & Food and Drug
Administration in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was a science oriented
agency, not as narrowly devoted to law-enforcement as Anslinger's Narcotics Bureau (then
being run along the same lines by his successor Commissioner Giordano). But it soon became
apparent that this was not to be the new direction. Commissioner Larrick began recruiting
gun-slinging agents, including a substantial number pirated from Giordano, and tough
regulations were promulgated, with emphasis on the new order of things in which everyone
who did not carefully toe the line risked prison. FDA district directors went about
warning audiences of affected persons:

It is now a criminal offense under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to fail to
prepare or obtain, and maintain, complete and accurate records as required by Section
511(d) and it is also a criminal offense to refuse to permit access to or copying of any
records required by that section. In addition, it is interesting to note that any drugs
with respect to which adequate records have not been prepared, obtained, or maintained are
subject to seizure. Any equipment used in the manufacture, compounding, or processing of
such drugs is also subject to seizure if the violation was committed by the manufacturer,
compounder, or processor.

Steps were soon taken to add sixteen drugs other than amphetamines and barbiturates to
the controlled category, including not only LSD and several chemically produced
synthetics, but also mescaline and peyote, 'except when used in bona fide religious
ceremonies of the Native American Church."

Some of the FDA medical people, directed to beat the drums for the new Act, hedged a
little. Consider, for instance, this from an FDA doctor to a group of student personnel
administrators:

I would guess that the undergraduate student is likely to use stimulants probably about
the time of final examinations. . . . There is no scientific evidence indicating that this
type of usage is seriously harmful to the subject's health or level of performance if it
is not carried to an extreme. On the other hand, the use of sedatives or stimulants to
augment the pleasure-producing effects of alcohol, such as might occur at an unsupervised
social gathering, could lead to automobile accidents, or impulsive sexual assaults.
Incidents such as these are not documented in the scientific literature, and one must
depend largely upon rumor and lay reporting to gain some insight into this aspect of the
drug problem. ,

But the agency itself was not troubled by faintheartedness. In a widely circulated 1965
Fact Sheet it trumpeted its claims:

Abuse of drugs has become one of the major health and social problems of our times. The
non-medical use of certain drugs is contributing to a rising death toll on the highways,
juvenile delinquency, violent and bizarre crimes, suicides and other abnormal and
antisocial behavior. . . .

The traffic in heroin and other narcotics is being overshadowed by the peddling of
barbiturates, amphetamines, and other depressant and stimulant drugs, such as LSD-25 and
some tranquilizers. There is evidence that such traffic has become an even more serious
problem than the narcotics evil. . . . Organized rings bootleg barbiturate and amphetamine
drugs on a large scale. Some of these rings cover many states and deal in millions of
tablets and capsules. . . .

Growing abuse of drugs by teenagers is one of the most tragic and disturbing aspects of
the entire drug abuse problem.

FDA speech bits, prepared for use by its inspectors before school and civic groups and
anyone else who would listen, spread the alarming word:

Mr. - Mrs. - has told you what I'm going to talk about (today) (tonight). There you see
it on the heading of the exhibit-"The Drug Habit: Big Problem."

Perhaps your immediate reaction was "problem? to whom? Oh, maybe in some distant,
unhappy places, but not here in our (town) (city) (school) I Certainly not to our
children."

Are you sure? Perhaps the parents of two West Virginia boys I want to tell you about
felt as you do-safe from the drug abuse problem. Yet in 1964 these boys, 18 and 21 years
old, began a crime spree that took them across five states and ended with their being
sentenced to die in the electric chair. They bad been using amphetamines continuously for
three months prior to their crime spree. . . .

In February, 1965, three youths, two aged 16 and one 17, assaulted a 66-year-old man on
a Chicago street and fired eleven bullets into his body. The motive was robbery. They
found $11.

When apprehended, they admitted being under the influence of barbiturates. They
explained that the money was needed to buy more pills.

These are the kind of problems I'm going to talk about (today) (tonight). Not narcotic
addiction. That we hear a great deal about. We hear less about another form of the drug
problem-the abuse and misuse of the stimulant and depressant drugs-the amphetamines and
the barbiturates. . . . Even though you may have heard less about it, this problem is even
more widespread than narcotics addiction and just as tragic in many instances. . . .

Some truck drivers have used them to stay awake on long night hauls, although this is
forbidden by commercial trucking firms. . . . Tragic highway accidents have followed their
use. . . . The concern of many parents is expressed strongly in a letter written recently
by a worried mother who stated, in part: "I am the mother of two little girls and the
thought of sending my children to college, after doing my best to raise them decently,
only to have them constantly exposed to drugs that undermine logic, morals, intelligence
and health, is absolutely terrifying.........

[Photo caption] Truck stops and bars are prime sources of the illegal sale of these
pills and FDA has had to use undercover agents posing as truck drivers in the detection
and prosecution of peddlers. This picture portrays the story of an FDA inspector who is
checking on some of the 3,000 Bennies he bought from the pill pusher, shortly before the
arrest was made.

[Photo caption] In this. accident, a tractor-trailer had crossed over the double white
lines. The trailer slammed into an oncoming post office truck. Drivers of both vehicles
were killed instantly! Three workers sorting mail in the postal van were also killed.
Total number dead-5. Bennies were found in the stomach contents of the tractor-trailer
driver and more tablets were found in the wreckage of his cab.

[Photo caption] After too many Bennies, you begin to see things that aren't there, and
often you don't see what really is there; this is a sample of what can happen. This
driver, trapped in his cab, ran into a freight car. Two hours after this picture was
taken, he died-it took almost two hours to cut him out of the cab. The autopsy showed that
he had taken more than a dozen Bennies. . . .

This exhibit does not show all the consequences of drug abuse. Other results are seen
in terms of crime, delinquency, school dropouts, disruptive family quarrels, inability to
hold a job, broken health, progression to marijuana and hard narcotics, and ultimately
perhaps confinement to a hospital or mental institution.

In the bootstrap pattern we saw half a century earlier when the Prohibition Unit
launched its war on drug users, Commissioner Larrick soon began claiming that the
effectiveness of his agents was raising the black-market prices of dangerous drugs so much
that the illicit traffic was obviously attracting more predatory peddlers. Result? Why,
FDA would need larger appropriations, more manpower to make more arrests, and tough
enforcement policies to deal with "big-time criminals."

But Larrick was personally riding for a fall. His resignation was accepted at the end
of 1965, and he passed into retirement just before the new Drug Abuse Amendments took
effect.